


Fog

by Deastrumquodvicis



Series: No Longer One of the Angels [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mental Hospital, Winglock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-27
Updated: 2012-09-27
Packaged: 2017-11-15 04:02:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deastrumquodvicis/pseuds/Deastrumquodvicis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A medicated fog swirls through the mind of ex-angel Sherlock Holmes, stealing his ability to think and paving the way for dangerous emotions to surface.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fog

**Author's Note:**

> The in-character Tumblr for this Sherlock is at http://nolongeroneoftheangels.tumblr.com
> 
> Takes place in 1976.

The day was foggy.  No, that was just Sherlock’s mind.  Distant.  Where was he?  Pale blues and greens.  Hospital.  That explained the pain…no, it didn’t.  It went hand-in-hand with it, but it didn’t _explain_ it.  He stumbled out of his room in his nightclothes, wings drooped so low—wings?  Oh, yes.  Wings.  Funny how he’d forgotten them when they were clearly the source of the pain.

He staggered into some form of communal living area, in a daze.  Why a daze?

_Three little pills._

_Oh._

Whatever medicine he’d been given was messing with his mind, leaving him to leave his body, few to no sensory inputs, a sort of chemical blanket holding his mind down and stealing awareness.  People walked by as he stood in the entrance to the hall, brushing his wings, sending sharp lightning fire up the nerves all the way to his back.  Sherlock winced, eyes rolling, nearly passing out, but forcing himself on.  After all, he needed…something.  Answers?  That was what he usually needed.

Something told him this was his life now.  Pills.  Cafeteria food.  Sitting around a telly to watch the football.  Talking to doctors.  Being told his wings weren’t real, that he was no fallen angel, that he was just a man.  A very unwell man.

A young blonde woman approached, smiling gently.  ( _Patient_. _Friend?  Impossible._ )  “Are you doing any better today?”  Sherlock blinked, trying to force his mind to work well enough to figure out what she meant and how to reply.

“Fog.  Pain.”  That was the best he could manage.  “In here,” he said, pointing to his head.  “Fog in here.”  He’d been no stranger to drugs during the last few of the twenty-six years he’d spent alive, on Earth, as a normal human, but this was something…different.  Just slightly, enough to know it wasn’t his usual cocaine or morphine, but he knew the feeling of a drug-muffled mind quite well.  And it had been with him for a period of time he now couldn’t remember.  The woman nodded, understanding.  And then a hand clapped down on his shoulder from a stranger, from a man.

“Ah!  Sherlock!  Nice to see you up and about this mor—well, afternoon, really.”  Stevens.  Joseph Stevens ( _doctor_ ).  “Feeling up to mingling, I see.”

“Y…yes.  I think.”  Sherlock blinked slowly, trying to figure out a bit of everything, knowing it was just out of reach, just outside the fog.  “How…how long have I…”  He zoned out for an instant, silver eyes uncrossing and defocusing.  “Been here?”

“Three weeks, Mr. Holmes.  I understand you’re a bit disorientated right now, that’s understandable.  Come, sit down, your brother will be joining us soon.”

“Brother?”  Was that literal, would it be Mycroft, or would it be someone else who worked under the cover of family ties, someone who’d come to see if he’d apologize to Her for whatever it was he’d said or done that had wound him up here?  “Mycroft?”  Stevens nodded and half-guided Sherlock to the reclining chair to wait.

Time didn’t seem to pass anymore.  It was just sort of…there.  Things just happened, or they didn’t.  There was no silence, no dead space, he jumped from moment to moment, barely noticing when he did.  Fading in and out of awareness, the constant searing agony in his wings the only thing keeping him grounded, both literally and metaphorically.  He hardly remembered the first few days here at all, and when he did, the only thing he could remember was the sensation of being fried.

_Fried chicken._

A woman came around, just as the fog started to lift, insisting he swallow the three pills in her little cup.  Sherlock refused.  She insisted.  Sherlock refused again.  She told him not to make a scene.  He insisted that he not take the pills he didn’t really need.  Stevens intervened and practically ordered him to.  So Sherlock did, after an intense staring contest full of defiant fire.  He flopped back into the chair, keeping his systems working in an attempt to start the metabolizing quickly—he remembered that having an undigested, unabsorbed set of medications lurking in his stomach led to nothing but constant nausea, so the quicker he made it do as it was meant to, the better.

The fog was momentarily lifting, and Sherlock Holmes once again had the ability to use his brain.  ( _Had the turkey for lunch.  Been here three years.  Wrong diagnosis, wrong medication.  Criminal tendencies.  Abuse victim.  Delusions.  Former surgeon.  Hypochondria stemming from likely childhood food poisoning.)_ He was testing his skills of deduction and induction on everyone in the room, mind finally whirling again, feeling a bit free even if he seemed to be registering pain properly, until about half an hour later ( _Patient.  Doctor.  Patient.  Patient.  Visitor_.) when it was gone.

_Sea-fog._

After some measure of time between five minutes and an hour, he noticed the atmosphere of the room had changed drastically and that a familiar face had come into his line of sight.  “Hello, brother,” Mycroft crooned softly.  Sherlock ran his eyes along Mycroft’s graphite-grey feathers and instantly felt a pang of violent jealousy that he was too drugged-up to do anything with.  “Shall we go to your private room?”  Mycroft helped his little brother stand, but Sherlock shoved the elder man away.  Seven years had separated them in life.  Sherlock had passed on fifteen years before his brother had died of a heart attack, but by all rights, Mycroft was still the eldest.  Still in charge.  “Now, now, Sherlock, let’s not draw attention to ourselves.”

And that had been Mycroft’s life—and after-death—motto.  Always in the shadows.  Always lurking.  Hiding.  Manipulating things from behind curtains instead of jumping into the fray.  But perhaps this time, he was right.  Sherlock nodded, and made to go back to his own room, though not without shoving off another attempt by his brother to guide him physically.  They sat in Sherlock’s room, on his bed or at his desk, and the fallen angel looked weakly at his brother for some sort of explanation.  “When…can I…go…back?”

Mycroft’s face—and wings—fell.  “That’s what I’ve come to tell you.  I’m sorry, dear brother.  There’s nothing I can do.”  He genuinely looked apologetic.  “You can’t, at least not for a very long time.  Perhaps your physical agonies can be eased by a repentant prayer, one of sincere intent, but there is no simple fix for this, Sherlock.”  Sherlock just blinked, hearing the words, registering them, but not understanding their meaning.  A period of silence followed, and Sherlock had no idea how long it lasted.  It could have been ten seconds.  It just as easily could have been ten minutes or even an hour.  “I apologize.  I have done my best.  I will be returning every few weeks to monitor your progress.”  He rose, and then the door shut behind him.

_I’m sorry, dear brother._

_I have done my best._

_There is no simple fix._

_You can’t._

The meaning hit Sherlock like a bullet in the back, a realization that he’d have to live out his punishment here for decades or centuries, maybe even millennia.  But that was almost expected.  What he didn’t expect was Mycroft’s delivery of the news to be so…clinical, so cold.  And he hadn’t expected Mycroft to just…leave.

Mycroft.  With his working majestic wings and his holier-than-thou attitude toward everyone and everything but Her.  Mycroft.  Always the favoured child, both Above and here on Earth.  Mycroft.  Quickly promoted through the ranks for good, obedient behavior.  Mycroft.  Mycroft.  Mycroft.  Who had chosen his career—his new one—over his family.

_Traitor._

“Traitor!”  Sherlock flung open the door and chased after his brother who had left hours ago, screaming insults in English and in French and in the tongue of the Angels.  “You promised you’d watch out for me, you promised you’d protect me, that if it came down to your job or me, that you’d always, _always_ choose me!”  He wasn’t quite registering that Mycroft was nowhere to be seen, but it didn’t matter, because he knew that someone could hear him.  Someone who could tell Mycroft what he was feeling.  Hands grabbed his arms, trying to subdue him.  “Get off me, damn it, don’t you know who and what I am, what I _was_?”  He broke free, tearing his shirt along the way, and continued to run down the hall, screaming at Mycroft, and screaming at Her.  Eventually, of course, they caught up to him again, and held his arms and legs before taking him back to his room.

His room.  The place he lived.  His home, now.  He couldn’t think.  He could only feel.  He’d always hated that sensation.  Because when Sherlock Holmes’s feelings went unchecked, particularly rage, things got ugly.

He flapped his wings about, beating them, desperately trying to do something, anything, despite the searing pain caused by the friction of air on charred feathers, and he fluttered around like a wild bird trapped in a cage.  That’s what he was.  A screaming, mad, drugged-up bird, trying desperately to get out of a cardboard box whose walls were just barely too small for his wingspan.

Attendants came in after half an hour and plunged a needle into his arm to sedate him, and when he opened his eyes again, not only was the fog more oppressive than ever before, but he was in an entirely different room.  One with padded walls.  A black mood fell over Sherlock, a complete apathy for both his well-being and that of others, and he lay on the bed, wide awake (if foggy) for days, not moving an inch, not protesting when they put him on an IV he didn’t need, one which sapped all ability to think.  He just didn’t care anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Having been on a medication for the ADD I really didn't have, I sort of based it off of that sensation.


End file.
